


Crossed Circuits

by luckyfilbert



Category: Almost Human
Genre: Asexual Dorian, Fluff, Friendship, Friendship tinging toward pre-slash that will eventually be slash, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slash, police cruiser as primary setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 20:31:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1150476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckyfilbert/pseuds/luckyfilbert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian realizes he's been staring at John a little too long . . . and isn't sure why his sensors are reacting this way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crossed Circuits

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a (intended) series of ficlets in which Dorian slowly puts a name to his feelings for John.

Despite the winter weather, the squad car was stuffy and close in the sun. Dorian rolled down his window and flew his hand in the wind, wondering what it would feel like to have fingers that actually numbed. When his sensors told him that they should have, he switched the window back up and dropped his hands in his lap to warm them.

He could feel John glance at him--no sensors necessary for that, just a weird intuition he didn't understand yet. Dorian flicked his eyes back in time to see John look away.

"Long ride?" Dorian asked.

"Quiet day," John returned. "Jenkins and Reid both have the flu, so we're on traffic duty."

"I thought traffic duty 'is beneath the dignity of a detective of my standing,'" Dorian said, intoning the last phrase in Richard Paul's voice.

"Yeah, well." John spun the wheel in a one-handed turn. "Paul didn't break a couple MXs. Can't hurt to get on the captain's good side." He shot a sideways look at Dorian. "That's still creepy as hell."

Dorian responded with a broad grin and let the conversation peter out. John went back to watching the road, and Dorian, after a moment, realized he was still watching . . . John.

Startled, he snapped his eyes back to the window. But John didn't react, so after a few blocks had passed Dorian risked another glance. He watched John all the time, of course, gauging his moods, his actions, but for some reason this felt different. It was without purpose. He remembered dragging John through an art museum once, explaining _'It's not supposed to DO anything--just look at it.'_

Not entirely sure how John would feel about being compared to a modernist sculpture, Dorian nevertheless couldn't quite look away. There were tiny lines around the corners of John's mouth, the same ones that deepened when he smiled or when he scowled, and Dorian found himself wondering how he had never noticed that before. The laugh lines at his eyes looked older, less recently used. His skin crinkled and bent, showing every line of his life. If Dorian touched John's arm, he knew it would be warm with the mystery of muscle and sinew behind it. Dorian's skin was top-grade synthetic, but it couldn't change with him, and behind its precisely regulated 33°C was only the hum of circuitry.

Dorian felt those circuits begin to hum faster, pushing increased energy to his mind and digits. A fear response. Quickly he accessed the part of his memories that had been monitoring what happened while he watched John--gazed at John, his vocabulary database supplied helpfully--but couldn't find anything of note. They were still cruising, up on the freeway now so there wasn't even the stop-and-go of traffic lights. A hotshot had swerved around them before noticing the police decals and slowing contritely, but that wasn't it. No, the fear impulse seemed to be coming _from_ John.

 _Was_ John.

John looked over at him then, and Dorian found himself locked staring into green-gold eyes. His mouth went suddenly dry.

"Dorian?" John flicked his eyes between the road and his partner, a light crease in his brow. "You okay?"

"I just got a--a weird feeling," Dorian's colloquials supplied. "Like a . . . nervous hunch, I guess."

"I didn't know they programmed you with spidey senses."

Dorian punched him in the arm, and John snorted back his laughter before letting it out in a bark. Dorian joined in, laughing more at John than at the joke.

"So," John drawled after he had recovered. "A weird feeling, huh?"

Dorian started a search on human stimuli and responses. "Yeah," he said, flipping through the hits. Quickened pulse, dry mouth, tingling fingers. "Just a . . ."

_Oh._

A pause. "You okay there?"

Dorian cleared his throat of nothing and canceled the search. "Uh, yeah. Yeah." He turned his gaze very firmly to the window, trying to ignore the all-too-obvious feeling that was now clinging around his chest. "It's gone now anyway."

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to try out writing a Dorian who understands himself in very robotic terms and just explains those in human terms for John. Figured that was a nice opportunity to write him more asexual, or at least demisexual. (I'm basing this off my own experiences as a self-identified asexual, but if I say something that's way off base or offensive, please let me know. My experiences aren't universal.)
> 
> Also, normally I have a very get-shit-done writing style. I tried to make it slightly prettier in this piece for fluff's sake. Hope it worked. . . . Feedback always appreciated!


End file.
